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India's "$10 Laptop" To Cost $100 After All
narramissic writes "In case you missed it, India's Minister of State for Higher Education yesterday announced the development of a $10 laptop that will target higher education applications. There were no specifications given for the laptop and the rock-bottom price raised questions about government subsidies. Today, the figure was corrected: It's not a $10 laptop; it's a $100 laptop. Still no specs though."
They'll have it up to $1000.
Pesky decimal points....
They must've added Windows to it?
It should have read â10. It's about $100
I'm getting tired of seeing people screw up on OLPC, I think I must've seen this type of stuff at least .01 times
If you can read this... 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100111 01100101 01100101 01101011
If you're willing to use non-buggy CPU that sometimes moves the decimal.
You don't need to read the label on a $0.35 chocolate bar to figure out it's made of 3% chocolate, 60% fat, 20% lecithin, and 27% wrapping.
... I mean, how the hell am I supposed to sell people a $400 extended warranty on top of that?
OLPC started as $100 laptop, but now its double the price... so this $10 laptop is now $100! So, this is the real $100 Laptop
Just give it some time, the dollar will get there.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
Seems like someone's outsourced bullshitting to India now.
Even if this story began as a typo, I don't think a $10 laptop is a pie in the sky.
The key here is to rethink our expectations for a laptop versus what the developing world actually needs. The OLPC, for example, is a beautiful machine, but its capabilities are honestly far beyond a baseline which would still make a huge impact on schoolkids living in poverty.
Imagine something like the following:
- Reflective, passive-matrix black and white screen
- Low-end (ARM9-based?) system on a chip
- 256 meg flash-based hard drive
- Custom, miniscule Linux distro consisting mostly of a web browser
- Big, old-style NiCd batteries
- 1995-style trackball
- Wired network adapter; USB host with optional wi-fi addon
With some creative engineering, I could imagine this sort of system getting down to the $tens, and with the kind of mass production you'd need to get this to many millions of kids, I think an ultimate $10 pricetag is completely doable.
Of course, I'm not actually a product engineer, so perhaps a real one could tighten up my specs (or dash my unrealistic idealism on the rocks).
Your mind is clear / The things that you fear / Will fade with how much you / Believe what you hear
(rabble rabble ...)
I don't want to seem dense, but I have wondered for a while why we don't see far more inexpensive laptops ... I'm not exactly talking about a "$100 Laptop" but if you look at how much processing power is available in inexpensive portable devices like the Nintendo DS, PSP, and iPod Touch and how nice the screens are on inexpensive portable DVD players you'd think that someone would be able to manufacture a pretty decent system for web-surfing and word-processing (and what not) at a price that was amazingly affordable.
In both developing and developed nations a $200 laptop could really change things ...
Now I won't be able to afford one.
Slightly OT, but certainly pertinent:
More than one in five human beings have access to the internet .
Looking good for open sourcing governments.
unfortunately that might just be the conversion rate... $10 US dollar to their $1.
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
If we distributed a whole bunch of OpenMoko phones and a whole bunch (but not necessarily quite as many) OpenMoko development machines, this would accomplish what OLPC was trying to do.
Mobile Phones and SMS TXT services are already transforming large portions of Africa. Mobile phone infrastructure is a lot faster to set up and a lot less vulnerable to looting than wired infrastructure. It's a lot more scalable than the OLPC mesh networking -- after all the owners are economically motivated to expand it. SMS and mobile is already giving Africans access to networking and financial services that they didn't have before. (Yes, there's SMS banking in Africa now.) Completely open smartphones with completely indigenous developers would fuel innovation and economic growth in a way which is immediately practical, useful, and completely tailored to local needs.
Oh I see where this is going...
Optional accessories:
- LCD screen : 150$
- CPU : 100$
- 512 Mb RAM : 50$
- Battery : 100$
- AC Power adapter : 80$
etc.
There are things money can't buy, but for laptops accessories, there's mastercard.
But yeah... I guess the laptop could be 100$ itself.
Back to the good ol' times where GM sold there cars with "wheels" and "Steering wheel" as an option.
and if they stick with the same technical specifications long enough It will get down to $10.
I remember before intel was the king of CPUs that there was the Z-80, and by the mid-90's Z-80 embedded systems (like the franklin bookman electronic dictionaries) were selling for around $40, with a hangman cartridge on flash memory.. the big cost, back then was the flash memory, and sadly Franklin moved away from the command line/text interfaces to go with more costly fancier displays, etc. only to go to more simple displays again, and 'text to speech' processors...
here's the thing though, by the mid 90's the Z-80 microprocessor was so energy efficient that you could literally run it off 2 cr2022 lithium batteries, and while i didn't use the dictionary every day, it took 13 years for my batteries to fail, to be honest though i used it more for hangman than for a dictionary.
if i used it daily, it would still last a long time, though, especially since it saves where you are in the dictionary so you can turn it off, then when you turn it on again it's in the same place. very easy to use, and nice.
the reason why i know it's a Z-80 is because i took the dictionary apart to look at it once. they do have cheaper non speaking dictionaries today, as well. http://www.franklin.com/estore/dictionary/TG-450/ like that one (12 language translation! for $40) for whatever reason the language translating models cost the same as the basic english models, and they have a wide array of 'high end' speaking dictionaries, including ones with mp3 playback, and ebook reading features...
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
Well, I'd almost guarantee that it will have better hardware than my first computer (Apple IIe) and that didn't leave me with less of a willingness to push forward on the internet. Ultimately, I'm just kind of being a dick here, but you do have to remember that what we might consider crappy and slow, they might still consider amazing. Yeah, it sucks when it takes 2 minutes to open a web browser, but if you've never seen the web before it's still great, and if it's your only access to the web it's still worth it.
I bring to mind the blackberry. I also bring to mind the fact that miniaturization costs money... And the blackberry is already higher specs then the kids in India need for school. Whats the problem?
Never disregard the raw power inherent to stupidity... they call it "dumb luck" for a reason...
From TFA:
"A low-cost laptop being developed by the Indian government in tandem with two leading Indian education and research institutions will cost US$100 when available, and not $10 as was earlier stated by the government."
First it was $10, then "uh oh, spageddios", it's $100... still think offshoring is a sound business investment?
stuff |
Why? Slave labour works great for us in the first world, why should developing nations have to escew their use?
It's been a long time.
The first true portable computer, the Osborne 1, sold for $1795. According to The Inflation Calculator, that's $3352.27 in 2007 dollars. It had a 4 mhz CPU, 65 kb ram, a 5 inch monochrome screen and only took single-sided floppies.
$100, even $500, by comparison is not bad.
http://twitter.com/OLDTELEGRAM
This confusion probably just stemmed from a miscommunication. India's Minister of State for Higher Education probably just called his tech center (which was outsourced to some overseas bidder) and couldn't understand the engineer because of the engineer's thick, American accent.
I am the richest astronaut ever to win the superbowl.
I'm already talking about the $1 laptop. Respect my incredible vision.
Actually, now that I think about it, it would be the other way around. With the US economy tanking, the price in US dollars of the laptop would be going up, not down.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
In the VIP room lap tops cost $100, the rest of us get the $10 dance.
Yossarian pulled back from Orr adamantly, gazing with some concern and bewilderment at Mt. Etna instead of Mt. Vesuvius and wondering what they were doing in Sicily instead of Naples as Orr kept entreating him in a tittering, stuttering, concupiscent turmoil to go along with him behind the scheming ten-year-old pimp to his two twelve-year-old virgin sisters who were not really virgins and not really sisters and who were really only twenty-eight.
Indeed. In my day, when Netscape only took 45 seconds to open, it was a Christmas miracle.
I am the richest astronaut ever to win the superbowl.
I have it on good authority that India is in contact with the P-P-Powerbook designers right now for large-scale assembly.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Maybe in Canadian dollars...
I just bought a replacement laptop keyboard for my 3 year old Dell - it was $53 shipped. Let's assume I was completely ripped off and paid 3.5x too much. That still puts the keyboard at $15.
Next, let's suppose that the cheapest B/W TV would provide the video out - it will be a little heavy, but that's around $20.
CPU, RAM, no battery. Ok, so that's sorta like an 802.11b router (slow is ok) - I've seen them for $20.
Add that up and you're still at $50 and missing all those little things that make a laptop nice to have.
Idealism dashed. I won't come out of retirement if you don't quit your day job. Ok?
Problem is that China can't approach quality or reliability unless pushed by the EU or US. When they are pushed, that doesn't always work too well, either.
What good is something that needs constant service, far from anywhere capable of fixing it?
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Actually, both figures were correct, but they forgot to publish which day's exchange rate for the rupee to the USD they were using.
Ten dollars always sounded way too good to be true. Most likely, it was a napkin calculation that went public.
Its probably happened to a lot of companies, nothing to be ashamed of.
Employee A chats with Supervisor A at a bar or company event involving alcohol. Employee A says that he doesn't know why the laptops they bought cost so much, hell, he could put one together for ten dollars! One dollar for the casing and structure, two dollars for the battery and screen, three dollars for the 'innards, and four dollars for shipping and handling! How did these laptops cost us $400USD each?
Supervisor A, being sneaky, goes to Manager A. Who goes to Higher-Up A. Higher-Ups B and C approve, and get the gears working. Story is picked up and released. Higher-Ups A, B, and C, talk to their engineering department. They are promptly laughed at, between bites of curry.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
....as calculated by the Bush Administration. To upgrade it, you just use one of their handy $870 Sporks to pry the case open.
Very true. On the other hand, back in the days the content was also less demanding. It is like participating in a 2008 car race with a Ford T. In its days it was great, but conditions have changed. (moderate car analogy...)
Would you like a slurpee with your laptop?
thank you--come again
Possibly a better car analogy would be giving an Indian family a Model T. Even though it's horrendously out of date, it's probably better than walking in a few situations.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
No it doesn't. Even ignoring the humanitarian reasons, it makes no economic sense. If you have a slave-owning civilisation then you split the population into producers and consumers. In a healthy capitalist society, most people are both producers and consumers, and trade works. Introduce slaves, and you have a large class of people who produce significantly more than they consume, a much smaller group (their owners) who consume more than they produce, and a much larger group who become progressively less able to afford to consume and less able to effectively produce in competition with the non-consumers. The imbalance eventually leads to large numbers of disenfranchised people, and no one being able to sell anything because there is no one with sufficient buying power who is able to afford it. This would have already happened between the US and China if China were not propping up the US dollar while they develop other markets.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Corporations almost never follow sound economic policies. Falls under "not my problem".
It's been a long time.
Were the $10 ones made in China or the $100? Probably the $10 ones are made in India and $100 in China and the ones that work made not in India or China.
Analytic & algebraic topology of locally Euclidean meterization of infinitely differentiable Riemmanian manifold
Read your post, then look at our economy, then remember Dick Cheney pressuring Congress to overlook Halliburton's record of slavery. Read your post, then look at the middle east (particularly Dhubai and Kuwait) and then remember the Bush administration pressuring Congress to overlook slave labor used by "contractors" working no-bid contracts in the Middle East.
Now, what is needed to bring about the biblical armageddon that our leaders openly pray for? Think hard and read your Revelations.
The cattle are being led to the slaughter....
On the other hand, back in the days the content was also less demanding.
But if there were a few million users out there with no ability to access "web 2.0" content, I presume that market niche would be filled - either by "light" versions of the heavy sites or by new sites. I'd wager that many could just use their mobile sites.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
I saw one in the $300s from Walmart with 2B core, 180GB disk, wireless, and Home Vista.
Very true. On the other hand, back in the days the content was also less demanding. It is like participating in a 2008 car race with a Ford T. In its days it was great, but conditions have changed. (moderate car analogy...)
Makes me want to have a model T in every race just for base line comparison purposes. It would be really sad though if that model T won over modern cars though.